Monday, August 10, 2015

Lies and the Surprise Birthday Planners Who Tell Them

www.catsvscancer.org

I seem to have gotten to a place in
my life where, when misadventure strikes, I think: “Well, at least I’ll get a
blog post out of it.” I’m not sure if that’s healthy. I’m going to say that it is,
provided I don’t go out looking for or trying to actively force calamities for the
sake of blog content. It would certainly be unhealthy based on my current
readership levels. If you people want me to start doing going out and making an
ass out of myself on purpose, you better start telling your friends.

Anyway, I planned to throw my fiancée
a surprise birthday party this past Saturday. In all of our ten years together,
only one time has either of us attempted to mount a surprise birthday party and
that ended in almost total disaster. Since then, all birthday celebrations had
been kept totally above board. For reasons I can’t truly explain, much in the
same way few best-selling novelists can properly tell you where their ideas
come from – I decided this, a week before our wedding, was the right time to
revisit the surprise birthday.

Now, I’m not one to tell you how to
read this blog, but I will go ahead and do that right now. Go to Youtube or
Spotify or your CD player or whatever and load up the “Ocean’s 11” soundtrack.
It will help set the mood for what is about to transpire.

Here was my game plan: On Saturday
afternoon, I was going to leave our house under the pretense of going to the
local cat adoption center where I volunteer every Saturday afternoon. Only,
instead of going and playing with kitties, I was going to go shopping for her
surprise party. I was going to get taco supplies, booze and maybe even some new
Tiki torches for our porch out back. Once the supplies were gathered, I would
then drive myself over to the adoption center and call her, claiming to have
locked my keys in my car. As she drove over with my spare set, my family and
hers would sneak into the house and thus the trap, er surprise, would be set.
We’d drive back, she’d open the door and BAM! Surprise.

My plan was perfect. Danny Ocean
couldn’t have done better if he had a baker’s dozen of friends helping him. I
took off from my volunteer gig and everything. I was ready. But then I got
greedy.

My greatest short falling in life,
at least it’s my greatest for the purposes of this post, is that I am prone to
trying to cram too much into too small of a window. It’s why I’m almost always
late for things. I looked at my suddenly empty Saturday afternoon and thought: “I
can squeeze a run in there.” This is where the record scratch sound effect
comes in.

So I reworked my plan. Instead of
using that entire window for shopping, and it was looking to be about a two
hour plus window, I decided to carve out a block of time to go for a run. Here
was my revised game plan: On Saturday
afternoon, I was going to leave our house under the pretense of going to the
local cat adoption center where I volunteer every Saturday afternoon. Only,
instead of going and playing with kitties, I was going to go to a nearby park
and go for a run. Since I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in my sweaty
running clothes, I decided to put my running clothes on under a nicer outfit.
After my run, I would then drive to my parents’ house, shower there, change
into nicer outfit I’d worn out of the house that day (and into some spare
underpants and socks I’d smuggled out as well). From there, I’d shopping for taco
supplies, booze and maybe even some new Tiki torches for our porch out back. Then,
I’d then drive myself over to the adoption center and call her, claiming to
have locked my keys in my car. As she drove over with my spare set, my family
and hers would sneak into the house and thus the trap, er surprise, would be
set. We’d drive back, she’d open the door and BAM! Surprise.

Brilliant. Everyone wins. Let’s
flash forward to game day. There I am, wearing two pairs of shorts, carrying a
plastic bag which appeared to be full of trash, but which actually contained my
change of clothes. I kissed her good bye and walked out the door, like Danny
Ocean on his way to Vegas. I drove over to the park, stripped off my top layer
of clothes to reveal my running wear. I took a key off my key ring so I’d be
able to get back in when I was done running. I realized, I’d left something in
the car which I needed. I inserted the key into the lock and – go ahead and cue
the Benny Hill music – nothing. Whoops. I’d taken my house key, not my car key
off the ring. I was now locked out of my car for reals, a full two hours before
I was supposed to be locked out for pretend.

I have one spare set of keys and it
was at home, with my fiancée. After a few moments, I knew what I had to do. I
started running back home to get them. I’d act like I’d forgotten something
else and then hope she didn’t notice my car wasn’t back out in front of the
house. Luckily, it’s not a far run. A couple of moments in, I stopped. I looked
down. I was wearing totally different clothes. Also, if I took my spare set, how
would I get her out of the house later? No dice. I sat down in the shade and
considered my predicament.